“Sorry,” Derk apologized. “Caught you at a bad moment, Prince.”
Talithan smiled. “Merely that the Horselady has given me Pretty, Lord, after some negotiation. I take pleasure in seeing you look better than erstwhile. What is it I can do?”
“Find Barnabas, wherever he is, and bring him here, if you would be so good,” Derk said.
“Ah,” said Talithan. “Then you noticed the man deliberately botched the magics on the unpleasant soldiery? I had been wondering if I should inform you of it.”
“Er—that was on my orders,” Querida admitted. “The man was on both sides.”
“Just bring him,” Derk insisted.
Prince Talithan bowed and swept Pretty and himself away inside the magic haze. Everything at once felt drearier. The Pilgrims sighed. Shona said angrily, “He’s welcome to Pretty! Silly, fickle little horse!” and then burst into tears.
“There, there, my love,” Geoffrey said with his arm around her. “I’ve heard this is the way elves make you feel, that’s all it is.”
“Right. Oh, right!” agreed Professor Ledbury. “As if one had lost something precious.”
I have, Derk thought. I’ve still lost Kit.
TWENTY-SEVEN
KIT, TO HIS SHAME, could not keep up with the dragons or Lydda. There was nothing wrong with his new pinions as far as Blade, sitting wrapped in his thick coat waiting to translocate, could see, but he was making no speed at all. When even the daylight owls passed him, Kit landed and howled with misery. Blade ran after him.
“It’s all right, you fool. You’re just terribly out of condition.”
“I feel weak and small and useless!” Kit groaned.
“I’m like that all the time,” Blade pointed out. “Look, would you let me sit on your back? I can move us both in stages then, I think.”
“Anything!” Kit said abjectly.
Blade climbed astride him, clamped his knees on Kit’s great wing muscles, and shoved off toward Derkholm. He managed to move them about ten miles.
Kit dug his talons into the wintery grass. “You’re going in the wrong direction,” he said. But at that moment, Scales and the mauve dragon, with Lydda winging hard to keep up, went sailing over about half a mile to their left. “I let you off,” said Kit. He let go of the grass, and Blade took them another ten miles or so. “I could have sworn—!” said Kit. “You know, I think you go in zigzags, like that blue demon did.” He became very interested in the process of translocation after that and nearly forgot his misery. They arrived on the hillside above Derkholm well ahead of Lydda and the dragons.
Below them, Derkholm and its grounds were covered with a dome of magic so thick and strong that it looked milky white. Frost had formed on it, making it wink in the slanting autumn sunlight. In the valley in front of Derkholm was an extremely large crowd of people, most of whom seemed to be angry. Blade could see fists being shaken and placards being pitched this way and that. DOWN WITH CHESNEY, he saw, just before somebody threw it down and jumped on it. There was angry tussling around THIS IS OUR WORLD and BAN PILGRIMS, and someone was hitting someone else with UNITE AGAINST THE TOURS. Those not brawling were chanting. Blade could hear, “Why are we waiting?” counterpointed against “Go home, Pilgrims!” He climbed off Kit and put his hands over his ears.
“Help!” Kit muttered.
The dragons on the hills had been sitting so still that Blade had vaguely taken them for piles of rock. But as soon as he moved, huge dragon heads swung their way. Enormous green or yellow eyes inspected them disdainfully.
Kit cleared his throat and trumpeted across at the nearest dragon. “Excuse us. We’re on our way home. Do you know if it’s possible to get in there?”
“People have been coming and going through a little hole at the back,” the dragon sang back, and yawned. Smoky breath poured down the hillside around them.
Blade and Kit hurried downhill out of the smoke, coughing. “The back gate must be open then,” Blade said.
“I hope I can fit through it,” said Kit.
The hole in the dome was a very tight fit indeed. Kit stuck in it at first, until Blade prodded Kit’s straining hindquarters and yelped, “Hurry! There’s a dragon after us!” Kit shot inside as if the hole were suddenly greased and glared at Blade when Blade popped through after him. “Well, you’d have been all day if I hadn’t said it,” Blade said.
Kit muttered, and muttered some more when they passed his shed and found it stacked full of ba
skets with golden goblets and crowns spilling out of them, but Blade could tell that Kit was too glad to be home to be truly annoyed. They came around to the terrace steps, where they stopped and stared at the patchwork of house and shredding Citadel. They came up the steps into a crowd of dwarfs and Pilgrims, who were all gazing at Prince Talithan, towering out of a blue-green haze near the front door and looking surprisingly grim. Talithan had one long elfin hand clamped on the shoulder of Barnabas.
Inside his ring of gray curls, Barnabas’s face was an unhealthy blue-red. He was shaking. “You must see how it is, Derk,” he was saying. “You have to understand. I have a drink habit to support. And the mines don’t do any harm. We only export earth.”
“Secretly, without anyone getting paid for it except you,” Querida said from her seat on what looked like a ruined black wall. “And the earth you export happens to be full of magic.”